


Won't You Shelter Me From The Cold?

by MerlinScmerlin



Series: Nothing to Be Worried About Because Heros Are Real [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: But not between or by main characters, Chair Sex, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Dry Humping, F/M, Healing, Healing Sex, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kinda polyamory, Not Beta Read, Smoking, Started without plot ended with it, Trauma, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:54:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27501901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerlinScmerlin/pseuds/MerlinScmerlin
Summary: Bucky Barnes follows Darcy home after the events of The Avengers Civil War. He never leaves. Darcy wants to help him, but James is a mess. Unable to meet her eye and gone selectively mute, what is Darcy supposed to do with the troubled man?Be there for him, she figures. Even as a spark of something more grows between them.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers (background), James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis, James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers (future)
Series: Nothing to Be Worried About Because Heros Are Real [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/372497
Comments: 15
Kudos: 202





	Won't You Shelter Me From The Cold?

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a part of a series of one-shot PWPs. But 11k words later, and I figured it deserved its own stand alone.
> 
> Warnings:  
> 1) Implied/Referenced Non-Con: None of the characters experienced or perpetuated it, but it is referenced. More specifically, Bucky alludes to the fact that was one horror he didn't experience under Hydra.  
> 2) Eventual Throuple/Poly Relationship: Not the focus, but I did some hand wavyness here to say that Steve/Darcy discussed joining Bucky in a relationship if/when he was ever ready. I assume, in real life a dyad and potential third would have a lot more serious conversation before jumping into sexy times.  
> 3) Mental Health and Consent Warning(?): In real life, sex and developing feeling for a person that brings you comfort can be a healthy coping mechanism. It also can be unhealthy, especially if the power dynamic skews in the favor of one party. To me, Bucky and Darcy having sex here is fully consensual, and both are fundamentally free agents. I read this as maybe unwise, but not dubious. If you (or anyone disagrees) let me know. I will immediately add a tag if that's the case, to err on the side of caution.

Darcy laid in her bed, Stark Watch vibrating on her wrist letting her know it was time to start the day. She was in her own suites in the Avengers Tower, alone in her bed but not alone in her apartments. Somewhere nearby, Bucky Barnes was making himself at home.

Well, not making himself at home _exactly_. Bucky was staying with her. With her but not his best friend and former lover, Steve. Darcy and Steve danced around the subject, an unspoken tension between them. Darcy could tell the blond supersoldier was a little bit jealous and a whole lot confused. Darcy was in the same boat herself, honestly. It was impossible to tell what Bucky Barnes thought about the situation. It was impossible to tell what Bucky Barnes thought about much of anything.

She had slept alone that night, and all the night’s since the events in Leipzig and Serbia months ago. The initial rush of anger and betrayal had passed. Settling in was the chill of disappointment.

Darcy shivered in her bed, burrowing under the covers for a brief respite from the chill of the Tower’s AC. She had set her AC colder when Steve had started spending most nights with her. It was the only thing that stopped her from overheating, since Steve was a giant space heater. She kept forgetting to change the thermostat back.

She missed Steve. Not enough to let him back in yet, but she missed him.

Darcy knew she had to get up out of bed. There was so much that needed to be done. Due to the time difference between Wakanda and New York, Darcy had an early morning appointment soon with Princess Shuri, King T’Challa’s sister. As an apology for his involvement in the recent battles, T’Challa offered his best scientists in undoing the Winter Soldier conditioning. Naturally, Darcy and Shuri hit it off like a house on fire. Darcy was secretly working her ass off to impress and keep up with the Wakandan princess.

After her one allotted 5-minute snooze, Darcy threw herself out of bed and out of her bedroom. Only stopping to put on a bra. She would need a gallon of coffee before she was anywhere near functional.

Walking into her living space, the morning sun was a crescent of light peeking above the horizon. Despite Darcy being a night owl, Darcy loved and needed a sunrise. It jarred her into wakefulness, and gave her a morning dose of Vitamin D. She spent so much time indoors for meetings and laboratory experiments, the young woman was afraid she was getting so pale that she’d start being mistaken for a vampire. And not of the fun and funny Twilight kind.

 _I miss old-JARVIS_ , she thought with a touch of melancholy as she set the coffee maker to working. JARVIS used to set the coffee for her in the mornings. Though it was only an extra few minutes added to her morning routine, she missed those little pieces of sibling affection.

Don’t mistake her, Darcy was glad Jarvis was still alive. He just happened to be a physical being who used the name 'Vision' as his super alter-ego. Even still, things were different. The pair of them were still learning how to be family to each other, even though the catastrophe with ULTRON was years ago.

Change was hard. Growth was uncomfortable. Life moved on.

Darcy got the first mug of coffee in her belly, burning her tongue slightly with how quickly she consumed it. When she had a second mug prepared, she emerged from her caffeine-haze and finally looked around for Bucky.

Over the last weeks, the two brunettes had fallen into a bit of a routine. The days where Bucky couldn’t sleep and spent all night in her gym, Darcy would cook breakfast while Bucky showered. Otherwise, Bucky himself would man the stove while Darcy got ready for the day. All the while, Darcy chatted absentmindedly at the former Winter Soldier. Topics ranged from her agenda to her thoughts on which queer pairings she’d like to see become cannon in her favorite TV shows.

Darcy wouldn’t call their routine domestic. First of all, Bucky never responded to her ramblings. He had spoken aloud maybe two words in the entire time she had known him. Steve swore he had been verbal before, but Darcy had a tough time imagining it.

Second of all, there were certain topics that were absolutely off limits: World War II, Tony, Howard or Maria Stark, Steve Rogers (on most days), his therapists, his doctors. God forbid, trying to bring up the occasions where he would lock himself in the bathroom for hours and Darcy had to coax him off the tiled floor without scalding herself on the water sluicing down his body. She lost her fifth favorite mug by mentioning Russia.

Third of all, Darcy _had_ to be careful with how she talked to Bucky. A feat that wasn’t easy for her. Bucky didn’t deal well with orders. One time she told him to “Go the fuck to sleep," he dropped where he stood in her kitchen. Not forced to sleep but Bucky had expected to be. As if he had been waiting for his will to be overridden and his body to betray him. Darcy helped him up off the floor and swore to never do that again.

Fourth of all, Darcy _also_ had to be careful how she asked him question. Especially when they were too open ended. On the very first day in her apartment, Darcy asked Bucky what he wanted for dinner. The former winter soldier went catatonic and unresponsive for several hours. Now, she did her best to stick to strictly rhetorical and “yes or no” questions. 

Finally, he refused eye contact. Or looking at her or anybody completely, if he could help it. Darcy was sure the therapists swirling around Bucky would have plenty to say to Darcy to help her understand Bucky’s behavior. Darcy refused to ask. Darcy would let Bucky come to her in his own time and she put it out of her mind.

While there were too many many sharp edged traumas lying between them to call their dynamic domestic, it was at least familiar. Therefore, it was a bit of a surprise to Darcy when she realized that she couldn’t hear the shower running. Nor was Bucky in the kitchen, clanking about, making a feast of eggs, bacon and toast.

Darcy wandered to his room (her old spare bedroom), finding it empty. The bed was made and still as spartan as it was when she first set it up for him. She tried the gym, the other spare bedroom, her office. ( _Jeez, I’m one of those rich people now with more space and money than common sense._ ) All came back negative.

Eventually, Darcy spotted him on her balcony. Outside. Darcy hadn’t even thought to check there. To her knowledge, Bucky hadn’t left her apartment for anything but doctor’s appointments since he first arrived in the Tower. Nine times out of ten, Bucky forced them to come to him through sheer obstinacy.

Topping up her half-finished mug of coffee, Darcy fortified herself to go join him. Grabbing the new purple and silver blanket off her couch (Clint’s first and only attempt at knitting), Darcy wrapped it around herself and exited into the summer morning of New York City.

“Shit,” Darcy said the moment she was fully outside, talking at the figure faced away from her. They were hundreds of yards in the sky. The wind wasn’t terrible but it was omnipresent at that height. “It’s cold.”

Bucky didn’t respond to the statement, not that she expected him to. He simply sat on one of her large, blue adirondacks. (Darcy had become partial to them from her time at Culver, where they were ubiquitous.) On the table in front of Bucky sat a mug full of long-cold coffee, an ashtray full of butts, and a pack of her _only-when-I’m-drunk_ American Spirits. There was a lit half-finished cigarette in Bucky’s right hand. 

She hadn’t known he smoked.

Darcy, bitterly unhappy that she hadn’t put on socks before venturing outside, moved to plop into the seat next to him. She followed the line of his gaze to the distance, tracing the path of birds flying over the Atlantic Ocean. The morning was peaceful.

Darcy turned to her companion, checked him over with concerned eyes. Bucky kept his gaze hidden under dark bangs.

Wrapped around Bucky, burrito style, was a tartan fleece weighted blanket Darcy had purchased for him on impulse. The blanket draped over Bucky’s body, hiding most of him from view. Bucky had on no shirt that she could see, his right shoulder and arm bare to the morning light. His unsocked feet poked out the end of the blanket cocoon.

Darcy knew the fabric concealed extensive scarring. Especially on his left side, where she could make out the outline of the blocky metal shoulder bracket under the blanket. The blanket hung flat there, where there was no arm to give shape to it.

After her examination, Darcy settled her gaze on Bucky’s face. She stared at him, even as he failed to reciprocate, while she sipped her rapidly cooling coffee.

He was so still, Darcy could almost believe he was a statue. Carved out of marble by skilled hands, rather than born of flesh and bone. The only movement the dark figure made was the slow glide of cigarette to lips in a cycle of inhaling, holding, and release. The smoke disappeared instantly into the dawn. The release of breath and the sipping of coffee were the only sounds they shared.

When the cigarette was finally depleted, Bucky flicked the butt into the ashtray. Darcy's coffee mug was drained. The silence was comfortably, perhaps for the first time, between them.

\--

Darcy woke the next morning a few minutes earlier, before the sun had a chance to rise. She still gave herself her one-allotted snooze to shift, groan, and muster the energy to force herself out of bed. Eventually, she slipped out of bed and into her living room.

Bucky was once more out in the burgeoning dawn. Darcy wondered if he had been doing this for long. Darcy was constantly busy, really only returning to her apartments to sleep or to grab a change of clothes. It would be easy for her to miss what was happening with Bucky.

Especially if he was up and about when the young woman was normally sleeping. Huddling in shadows like a wraith.

Darcy made a full pot of coffee that morning. Swallowed one cup quickly, before topping up and pouring the rest into a thermos.

The morning air was just as cool and sweet as the day before. Darcy had forgotten socks again, but had fallen asleep at least in a pair of sleep shorts and shirt. Settling down next to Bucky, Darcy surveyed the scene. It was almost the carbon copy of the morning prior. Darcy noticed two major differences: the first, Bucky had finished his mug of coffee. Secondly, she could spot from the pack on the table that Bucky had finished her pack of cigarettes. She made a mental note to grab him some more.

“Coffee?” Darcy asked, gaze fixed somewhere a few inches to the right of the super soldier’s face. Still wanting to be able to be able to see if he physically responded to her question, but no longer a spotlight on him. Darcy had learned to accommodate a lot of his triggers and quirks, she figured she needed to do better about that particular one.

She caught the nod from the corner of her eye. Darcy smiled as she poured him a fresh cup. Bucky was non-responsive more often than not. She took the small victory for what it was.

The slurping and puff of cigarette smoke was nice, Darcy thought to herself. She could see herself enjoying these little moments of ritual between them.

\--

The third of their morning coffee dates was much the same as the prior two. This time, Darcy had her phone out and was cycling through all of the 90s music she felt Bucky absolutely had to be familiar with. While he was physiologically not much older than her (when you factor in the cryofreezing and supersoldier serum), he had none of her generation’s sense of pop culture.

Well … Darcy assumed he didn’t. Anyway, nothing about the moment suggested he was opposed to her selection. 

“Fuck yeah, this is my jam,” Darcy bopped her head along to Allainis Morsette’s “Ironic”. She almost squawked when Bucky leaned over, his body a stiff line of tension, to press the skip button on her phone. Bucky held his whole body frozen in the silence, like he was just as surprised as she was at his actions. They both sat still, until Savage Garden’s “Truly Madly Deeply” started playing.

“You asshole,” she exclaimed around a mouthful of laughter. Bucky unclenched, relief palpable. Her laughter continued to rise as Bucky kept changing the music. Not giving most songs more than a few seconds before skipping. Stopping only when he landed on Nirvana. 

Only then did Bucky lean back into his chair, to settle in to enjoy his coffee and cigarette. Darcy had long moved from laughter into out right snorting.

\-- 

Darcy could tell the fourth morning was going to be different. One of the fresh packs that Darcy had retrieved for Bucky was demolished, carton empty, sitting next to the thermos Darcy had spent 5 minutes looking for whilst she was making coffee earlier.

The thermos was empty too. 

The morning seemed dark, colder. Though there was nothing in the lines of Bucky’s body or face to suggest why that might be the case. His usual statue-stillness coming back with a vengeance, the lightness of the last three days gone as if it had never existed.

Darcy sat, holding her ninth favorite mug in her hands, and sat with him in silence. Darcy breathed more carefully that morning, sipped slower. A dark part of her was curious if Bucky was finally going to break. A smaller, darker part of her kind of wanted him to. Just to see anything real emerge beneath the blank exterior.

The silence wasn’t comfortable, but it was still familiar. Darcy didn’t move until her Stark Watch let her know she was running out of time to get started on her day.

“Have a good day, Bucky,” she said, departing for shower and breakfast.

Turned away, she didn’t see the way the words impacted Bucky. How his fist clenched and his whole body seized. Like he was having a full-body Charlie horse and could find no relief. 

The last few mornings were an oasis of comfort to Bucky. Every morning with Darcy was like that. And, like a man dying of thirst in the desert, he was absolutely convinced it was a mirage that would be snatched from him the moment he believed it was real. There were no good days to be had, Bucky was convinced. Only terrible ones to be survived. 

Bucky couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to, but knew he needed to, and tried desperately to escape reality. Even if the only thing he would find in his dreams were more horrors.

It had been days.

He was starting to feel the effects of deprivation, despite the supersoldier serum. At some point, Bucky had plunged head first into a nausea so profound he had trouble choking down water. He hadn’t eaten in almost 36 hours. A feat that, considering the prodigious appetites and metabolic needs of supersoldiers, was as impressive as it was worrisome.

Hours before Darcy arrived to keep him company, the sensation of sickness had nosedived so sharply, he had plunged past nausea and emerged on the side of ravenously hungry. Darcy was the only thing distracting him from the pangs of hunger that wracked his body.

Bucky couldn’t force himself to sleep when he was tired. Couldn’t force himself to eat when he knew he needed fuel. Couldn’t shiver, even though his muscles ached in the cold. Couldn't do anything correctly.

With Darcy gone, maybe he could wait out the feeling of hunger? Maybe he could win against the voice in his head that told him _assets should attain fuel in order to keep themselves at peak efficiency_? Maybe if he could do that … Maybe if he could do this one thing, just for a little while, he could prove to himself he was truly in control.

Bucky stayed outside until the ache of hunger passed, though his hands didn’t stop shaking. Though he had outlasted the sensation, he knew in his gut that he hadn’t won anything. He retreated inside to eat an entire carton of eggs and a whole loaf of bread.

 _Maybe tomorrow would be better?_ The thought was too desperate to be considered hopeful.

-

The fifth morning was as dark as bleak as the one before. Except the outside world seemed to match Bucky’s internal world. Fog and dew clung to the morning like barnacles, enveloping Darcy the moment she left the shelter of her apartment. 

Darcy knew it would be that kind of morning. There was no mug, no coffee, no phone playing music, no blanket. Bucky was sitting out in the humid cold in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. A brief in-and-out puff of air through her nose was the only show of frustration Darcy allowed herself. She retreated back to the warmth of the indoors to fetch some blankets, socks, an extra mug, and the extra pack of cigarettes she had hidden in her nightstand.

When Darcy returned, she poured Bucky a cup of coffee and silently handed it out to him. Bucky moved painfully slowly to accept it. Despite her hand wrapped around the mug, Bucky plucked it out of her hand without ever touching her.

Coffee poured, Darcy settled into her chair and opened the orange pack of American Spirits. Bucky stared at her from the corner of his eyes, peeking through his long hair, as she brought the tube to her plush, sleep-chapped lips.

Bucky catalogued Darcy’s every movement, the expansion of her chest, the way her cheeks hollowed out. The way her lips shaped around the first expulsion of smoke. How she closed her eyes with the simple pleasure lighting up her face.

“I haven’t done this while sober since Freshman year of college,” she added around another mouthful of bitter smoke. She offered out the lit cigarette to Bucky, held daintily between her index and middle finger.

Something that could either be a twitch or a shrug passed over Bucky’s hulking form. Darcy noticed but did not react. She kept her hand extended until he either accepted or denied it.

Maybe it was a bit underhanded of her, forcing him to give her a response rather than retreating from his non-response. Darcy was starting to become seriously worried, and figured it was time to start pressing.

Even slower than when he reached for the coffee mug, Bucky reached out for the lit cigarette on offer. 

Bucky fingers hovered millimeters from Darcy’s, he could feel the heat of them. A small part of himself wanted to let his fingers graze against hers. More than a small part. He was practically desperate for it. He was only able to resist closing the gap because of the years he had grown conditioned to the denial of comfort or anything remotely human.

However, Bucky couldn’t deny how that he pictured her lips as he brought the cigarette to his mouth. Nor could he deny that he savored it. Bucky only hoped that Darcy wasn’t as perceptive as Natalia, hoped that she didn’t catch the shameful pleasure that filled him at having his lips land where hers had been only moments before.

It was the first cigarette Bucky truly tasted since he started raiding Darcy’s stash.

Darcy lit another cigarette. Bucky looked down at the pack resting on the table and felt jealous of the lucky few of them that would get to touch her lips. And hopeful that, perhaps, she would grace him with another small act of kindness and light another one for him. An almost kiss shared between them.

Something in Bucky clawed at his throat. Telling him he could not let the act of kindness go unspoken. Even if she didn’t see it as such, it was monumental. That she would give it to him so freely. Unafraid to reach out to him. Unafraid to touch him.

Only his own fear held him back.

Bucky’s perception narrowed down to his throat. The coating of smoke down his esophagus, lungs coated with nicotine and his own sins. He forced air through vocal cords long eroded from disuse.

The sound croaked out between them, startling Darcy to turn in his direction. Darcy's breath caught in her chest and she looked at him. _Really looked at him_.

Bucky felt naked before that look, like she could read from his face what his throat was unable to produce. Bucky, in another life, would have burned and blushed under her scrutiny. His body didn’t allow for such things any longer. 

Darcy couldn’t make out a word in that noise. Bucky himself didn’t even know what he had been trying to to say. Only that he was desperate to say it. 

So far, the only word Darcy received from Bucky was a simple “Sorry.” That was two days into living with her, just after Steve had finally let slip that Darcy was Howard and Maria Stark’s granddaughter.

That 'sorry' sat like poison in his gut, a poison his body had instinctively moved to expel. He had the blood of Darcy's father, grandfather, and grandmother on his hands. He knew the word meant nothing but that didn't mean he stop himself from saying it. Darcy told him he had nothing to apologize for. Bucky wanted to believe her when she said that.

Words didn't mean anything though. All they did was hurt. Even worse, words made him hurt other people.

Darcy continued to hold her breath, waiting for the second attempt. She didn’t want to spook him before he could get started properly.

Bucky struggled. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. _What could he say?_

“Breakfast?” was the only thing that escaped the fortress that was his battered throat. Every letter dragged out of him was made of barbed wire. Inflection so flat that Darcy didn’t almost recognize that it was a question.

Not once did Bucky return Darcy’s stare. He couldn’t. He had dared enough for today, by accepting the taste of her from the lit cigarette. By speaking to her as if he was a person. If he looked directly at her, he would die. He was sure of it. He would be struck down by lightning or go up in flame. 

That’s what happened to demons when they came too close to something holy.

“Breakfast sounds amazing, hotcakes,” her response was warm in awe and happiness. Happiness for what, he was not sure. 

When they finished their cigarettes, the oppressive fog of the morning had evaporated with the rise of the sun. Darcy rose to her feet and headed inside to get started on breakfast.

Bucky rose to his feet and followed.

\--

Bucky was committed to never telling a living soul why he followed Darcy that first day. When Darcy had stormed into the Siberian Bunker and forced them all to stand down, he was in awe of her. Struck dumb, and a touch jealous of Steve. More jealous when the dame punched Steve in one breath and hugged him in the next. Bucky stared at Darcy as she repeated the procedure with Tony and then T’Challa (though the punch and hug were significantly less affectionate than the prior two).

He quietly hoped she would do the same to him.

Bucky focused on her throughout the aftermath. Watched as Darcy stood in the midst of bloody, violent men in nothing but an Iron Maiden armor meant for speed and not battle. The moment that cinched it for Bucky, the moment that nailed the vision of her to the cross of his heart, was what came towards the end of the confrontation.

As they all prepared to board the various jets, a bitter (verbal) fight broke out between Steve, Tony and T’Challa about what should be done with The Winter Soldier. Steve wanted to take him to the Tower, Tony wanted him in a prison cell, T'Challa wanted to take him to a Wakandan hospital. Bucky just wanted to rest.

Darcy yelled “ _Shut the fuck up”_ so loudly, a few icicles fell from the roof of bunker and all the men in her presence were silenced.

“The only person whose opinion matters on this topic is _James Buchanan Barnes_.” Darcy turned to face him then. Her cheeks were pink in the cold, her mascara smeared from old tears.

That was the moment. It was that look on her face. No fear, no sadness, no pity.

“Pleasure to meet you, James,” said Darcy. He liked the way she said _James_. Everybody else had been calling him Bucky or The Winter Soldier. _James_ , like a benediction.

Bucky nodded at her in greeting. All his words dried up in his throat.

"I’ve heard a lot of good things about you," Darcy continued on, mouth curved into a smile that looked like it was _genuinely_ happy to meet him. Him. A murderer and assassin. A monster. 

Not even Steve looked at him like that. Not anymore.

Bucky loved Steve. Steve loved Bucky. Water was wet. That’s just how things were. But Steve’s eyes … They were afraid all the time. Bucky wasn’t certain what frightened Steve. Afraid of Bucky? Afraid of losing Bucky again, maybe? Either way, there was a taint of desperate denial between them now as Steve struggled to accept that maybe the new Bucky was just a broken shadow of the man Steve used to know.

“What do _you_ want?” Darcy asked, still staring at him, eyes blue sapphires that scorched him where he stood. She ignoring the looks of incredulity shot at her from every corner, and waited for Bucky's response.

He averted his eyes and never dared look back.

Bucky didn't struggle to come up with an answer to a question. Not since he rose from the Potomac a free man, was an answer so clear and obvious to him. _What did he want?_ To follow Darcy. To orbit around her like Pluto caught around the distant Sun. So he did.

He followed her then and kept on following.

\--

“Have I ever told you about the terrible first date I went on to the Opera?” Darcy asked, the hint of a chuckle starting pre-emptively around her words.

Darcy didn’t wait for a response as she launched into some tale about a “Chad-looking motherfucker” between sips of coffee. That mourning, she was curled up in her chair. Eyes closed and enjoying the sunshine on her face, the coffee in her hands, and the company she kept.

Bucky was rapidly approaching the 150 hour mark without sleep. Not that Darcy was aware of that. He doesn’t think he’s gone this long without sleep before. But how would he know? It's not like he could trust his memories. 

His eyes were starting to tingle a bit from the sleep deprivation. (A person with normal pain tolerance would have called it sharp throbbing, but Bucky wasn’t normal in that regard.) Food was starting to taste like cotton. Or maybe it was his brain that tasted like cotton? He couldn’t be sure.

Focusing on Darcy made it better, though. If you asked Bucky after the fact, the sleep deprivation was his excuse for what he did next. Bucky, moving cautiously, turned towards the woman who had given him a home.

There was so much sweet contentment on Darcy’s face, Bucky burned in its light. Her hair was a black halo around her face. Skin creamy, as if spun from sugar and porcelain. Staring at her, he was surprised he hadn’t combusted. Perhaps if she opened her eyes, he would be. Not willing to risk it or worse, risk her catching him staring, he turned back away.

Even if he wasn’t a demon waiting to be struck down by holy light, he was absolutely sure of one thing. 

She was radiant. An angel.

\--

No matter how much Bucky tried to hold onto the vision of her, like a charm to ward away the insomnia, he couldn’t. It would slip from his mind and the cold would rush in. Filling his veins with ice water and guilt. Bucky did not deserve the comfort or warmth.

But he wanted it. Rather, he wanted Darcy.

\--

The following morning was the coldest one thus far, a crisp 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Plenty chilly if you were like Darcy, wearing wool sock, thread bear undies, and a bra. Darcy almost fled back inside for a sleep shirt. The coffee in her hands and the blanket around her shoulders were the only things preventing her from doing so.

Well … Plus the company.

Darcy didn’t break the silence when she took up her usual position. It was a heavy thing, a sharp-toothed beast between them. Something had shifted again since the day before. It was like she woke up and everything was moved one inch to the left.

Bucky’s whole body seemed tenser. The ashtray held almost a dozen butts, evidence he had been outside here for hours. He looked stiff underneath his blanket burrito.

There was a book laying face down next to the ashtray. Which was weird because Darcy didn’t have any books in her apartment. Darcy had moved them all to Steve’s. That was back before the Civil War, when they were planning to move in together. She hadn’t reclaimed them.

Darcy would make her apologies to all of the people she would be cancelling on but she wouldn’t move away from her seat unless there was an apocalypse. In an uncharacteristic display of patience, she let the silence lay. Even as they passed the 30 minute marker. Darcy observed the man through the corner of her eyes, knowing Bucky was returning the favor. 

Bucky broke the silence first. Darcy had to bite down a flinch at the sound.

“Thereafter I beheld,” Bucky’s voice was harsh, like he had been gargling shards of broken glass. He paused to clear his throat, before trying again. 

“Poscia vid’ io mille visi, cagnazzi

Fatti per freddo; onde mi vien riprezzo,

E verrà sempre, de’ gelati guazzi." 1

He delivered the lines timidly. Surprised, like he had found an old car that still worked. 

“Dante’s Inferno,” Darcy said, shifting from looking at him from the corner of her eyes to staring at him directly. Hoping to find anything there that could give her a clue, a hint, as to what was happening under that beautiful noggin of his. 

“Canto 32, Lines 70-73,” Bucky responded blandly, as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb of melancholy and horror between them. The broken man kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, refusing her gaze.

“Your accent is good,” Darcy added, not knowing how else to respond. A shard of sadness for Bucky slipped under her well defended heart, and made itself at home.

“I don’t remember,” Bucky shrugged. Painfully. “Learning.”

“Oh,” Darcy breathed out.

“Figured I might as well,” the statement trailed off. Unsure how to finish the statement, Bucky instead waved a depleted cigarette stub towards the coffee table. At her battered copy of The Inferno, which was supposed to be resting on Steve’s bookshelf.

For a lack of a better response Darcy said, “Well, isn’t that bleak as fuck?” 

Bucky let out a snort so unexpected, it startled the both of them. He felt punch-drunk from lack of sleep but also wired. Like his skin was going to mutiny against the rest of his body and leave him a blob of flesh exposed to the world.

Or maybe that was just the feeling of Darcy looking at him.

Darcy giggled softly at the noise, not quite sure if laughter would be welcome. Bucky shook his head at her slightly, a micro-expression of amusement flashing on his face, before disappearing back into cold distance. 

Darcy figured she was in the clear. Pointing out the obvious, she continued, “You’re a snorter.”

Darcy had been having one-sided conversations with Bucky since he moved in. Saying whatever was on her mind, ranting about work, divulging her horror at catching Tony, Pepper, and Bruce fucking on the elevator (again). Responding to Bucky’s silences as if he were an active participant, even if the only responses she actually got were long blinks and distant eyes.

Don’t get her wrong, she _knew_ he was listening. Darcy spent most of her limited free time with galaxy-class spies. She had picked up some of their observational skills. In the last week, his body would turn towards her subtly. Like a sunflower turning to catch the sun. Even if he never made eye contact, Darcy knew Bucky was paying attention.

“I didn’t expect that.” Darcy knew she was being awkward, hands stiff around the almost empty mug in her hands. Darcy had become so used to that bit of their one-sided dynamic, she was at a loss when he was actually responding. She desperately didn’t want to fuck this up. 

“You’re no Mrs. Grundy.” Bucky responded. His words were haltingly careful. As if he wasn’t sure how long his voice (or his will to speak) would last. “As my … ” He paused, voice choking.

He tried again, “As my ma’ woulda said.”

A smile split Darcy’s face, she was entirely unable to contain it. 

“You expected me to be uptight for some reason?” Darcy asked curiously, body going loose. The young genius had learned a lot about trauma in the last two months from working with the psychiatrists and psychologists on the team to cure Bucky of the winter soldier programming. Darcy (and everybody) assumed that when Bucky finally started speaking again, it would be to Darcy. She had been subconsciously bracing herself for an eruption of nightmares and horrors.

Instead, they were … Having a conversation? Darcy wasn’t sure what was happening between them.

“Stevie’s type,” Bucky’s voice still struggled around the words. Though, syllable by syllable, his voice was getting stronger. 

“Oh shit,” she blurted out. Plopping down her empty mug on the table in front of her, she burrowed under her blanket to ward away the slowly lessening chill. Letting him steer this conversation however it would go. “This I have to hear. Tell me everything!”

Bucky’s lip quirked up for a millisecond. “The last … Umm.” Bucky teased the word around his tongue. “Peggy?”

“Margaret Elizabeth ‘Peggy’ Carter,” Darcy reassured him.

“Peggy,” Bucky nodded in response, reassured that it wasn’t some trick of his own memory. “Proper lady. Mean right hook. Lota dames. Like that. In the S.O.E. ”

His sentences halted, like a driver stalling a stick-shift because they didn’t know how the gears worked. Progress was progress, however.

“I’ve been accused of many sins but never of being _proper_ ,” Darcy snorted out in delight. Amused at the first hints of character beneath the hard shell he presented.

“Never said,” Bucky labored the words out, though he wore mischief around his shoulders. “Steve was smart. About dames.”

“How dare you!” Darcy exclaimed in faux-offense, clutching at invisible pearls before crossing her arms in a huff. “I'm still going to take it as a compliment.” 

“Prideful,” Bucky teased. “He liked that. Too.”

Darcy blessed him with one of her slyest smiles, a quirk of lips that filled her eyes with mischief and drew attention to her plush lips.

Bucky was stunned by the force of it, and retreated back into silence.

“You have a way with words,” admitted Darcy, surprised despite herself. Bucky shrugged.

If forced to think about it deeply, Darcy would guess it was because she had a preconceived notion of _who_ Bucky Barnes was.

She knew James Barnes was a hero. Barnes started in the 107th Infantry Regiment, was deployed to Normandy where he earned a battlefield promotion to Staff Sargent as a part of the HHB 207th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Group. Their squad was captured in France, where Bucky, Gabe and Dum Dum were the only survivors. A hero that had more than one graduate dissertation written on his importance to the Captain America mythos and USA’s WWII efforts.

Darcy also knew about him through Steve’s stories. Steve’s big mouth landing them in trouble, and Bucky’s clever one getting them out of it. Stories of things so achingly personal, Steve could only ever say them in complete darkness while laying next to a half-asleep Darcy. 

Now, she had her first glimpse of that version Bucky. Or maybe just the last remnants of it. She was honest enough to admit she wanted to see if there was more. 

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you say in one sitting,” she carefully didn’t phrase it as a question. Just an observation she hoped he would pick up and continue. 

“Nothin’ much. Ta say,” Bucky’s voice had gone low, unassuming. It was held even more of that syrupy old timey accent. The same accent Steve accidentally slipped into when he had one foot in the past and one foot in the clouds.

Now that she had a peak under the shell Bucky presented, Darcy wanted to see if she could coax out more. Darcy took a chance with her next words.

“Can you tell me why you have been coming outside?” Darcy asked, hands clenched against her will underneath the blanket. 

The question was large and open-ended in the worst ways. A platoon of soldiers into a field of landmines. Her eyes studied Bucky cautiously, looking to see if there would be an explosion, an implosion, or if (by some miracle) her gamble would pay off.

It paid off. Bucky turned his body towards Darcy and he did the most unexpected thing yet. He finally made eye contact. 

The first thing Darcy noticed was the sunken, almost-bruised, look to his eyes. Even with the supersoldier serum, he looked like he had gotten into a fight with a vibranium weed-whacker and lost. The next thing she noticed was the color. The blue of his eyes were so much paler than Steve’s or her own. Greyer too, with a hint of hazel around the pupil. 

Bucky glowed in the morning light. He looked … Beautiful. Beautiful and sad. It punched a breath out of Darcy’s chest.

“Haven’t been sleeping,” Buck responded. She nodded in sympathy, and continued to hold her breath. Waiting patiently to see if he would add to the halting sentences he had graced her with so far. It paid off. “Nightmares.”

As all of Darcy’s best moments were, she reacted on impulse. Darcy moved her hand out from underneath the warmth and safety of her cover, and extended it to Bucky. A silent and unexpected gift.

_What was another expected thing in a morning of unexpected things?_

Bucky stared at her hand for a long time. Bucky had seen Darcy do this for Steve once, after a bad mission. Even while furious with Steve, she didn’t deny Steve a soft shoulder. Bucky could deduce that Darcy was the kind of gal who could no more deny her loved ones comfort than she could deny the fact that she had brown hair. 

Bucky was confused why it was there. _Why would Darcy reach for him like that?_ Like he mattered.

As the moment grew longer and longer, some instinct of Bucky’s told him that Darcy wouldn’t pull back her hand until he either accepted or gave a clear denial. There was a vein of steel in her velvet exterior. Discarding the cigarette butt long dead in his hand, Bucky made the same decision he had been making since he met the bombshell of a girl.

He followed her lead. Extended his one flesh and blood hand out to grasp hers. So hesitant, he almost looked afraid to Darcy.

The first touch of his hand against hers caused Darcy to shiver. She expected it to be hot, like Steve and Natasha. All the supersoldiers the young woman knew were human furnaces.

Bucky’s hand was cool. Not cold, but also not warm. Just cool. Only a scant degree or two cooler than her own, and Darcy had terrible hand and feet circulation.

Bucky tensed. Darcy latched his hand in hers, firmly, and refused to let go. Bucky’s eyes flashed up to look into her own again, before darting back to the horizon. Darcy squeezed it reassuringly.

“I get nightmares too, sometimes,” Darcy stated. An almost shiver passed through Bucky at the declaration, because he couldn’t think of someone that deserved nightmares less. Darcy felt it through her finger tips.

“Nightmares or insomnia, ” Darcy plowed on ahead, when Bucky failed to respond. “If you ever need or want company, I'm here.”

Another almost-shiver wracks through Bucky, Darcy could feel it in her hand but couldn’t see it affect his body. And she was playing close attention.

They sat in the dawn holding hands for several long minutes. 

Perhaps Tony or Bruce or Jane were fiddling about with space time, because Bucky felt like gravity was increasing all around him. That was the only explanation he could come up with to explain the way his eyelids felt like lead weights. That if he allowed himself, his head would droop on his shoulders and plummet him to oblivion.

\--

Sleep still eluded him that night but it felt closer, like some jungle cat waiting in the distance. So sweet and so close, Bucky could taste it.

\--

“I’m cold,” Bucky didn’t know he was going spew out those words until they had already left his lips. The mug of (decaf) coffee empty in his fist. Darcy hadn’t fooled him with that, but he went along with the charade and drank it anyway.

Darcy held out her hand again, just like yesterday. Like she wasn’t offering him the world on a platter, a panacea for his tattered soul. 

“You don’t feel so cold to me,” said Darcy, squeezing his hand. His hand enveloped hers. Her palm was a firebrand against his own, still warm from where she held the coffee mug moments ago.

“I feel it,” he admitted around the taste of bile. Honesty enough in those words to make him feel flayed alive and exposed. His eyes went dead, as they unfocused into the distance. “All the time. But I can’t shiver.”

Darcy connected some dots in her head. The cryotube, the environmental conditions of working as a supersoldier assassin, the brainwashing. The scorching hot showers he took every day. The Red Room probably trained him not to react to the cold. Or to react to any of his bodily needs. His body was a prison as much as his mind was. 

That realization was a lead weight in her gut. Darcy grasped his hand in hers tighter. Hoping to push some warmth into him by will-power alone. 

“What can I do to help?” Darcy asked lightly.

The snort in response was ugly, twisted. Bucky opened his mouth once more. The same Italian he had spoken just yesterday, returning then in a drawl. 

“E mentre che andavamo invèr lo mezzo,

Al quale ogni gravezza si rauna,

Ed io tremava nell’ eterno rezzo.” 2

Bucky's delivery was beautiful despite the bitterness laced there. Or maybe made more so because of it.

Darcy used her thumb to stroke along Bucky’s hand, trying to soothe away some of the darkness dancing in his eyes. There was the scrape of recently healed scabs along the soft skin of knuckles from where Bucky would pummel (and pummel and pummel) against the sandbags until his demons gave him a respite. 

The respites, Darcy knew, never lasted very long.

“Don’t worry about it, doll,” Bucky shifted his eyes back to hers, before fixing somewhere along the slope of her neck. 

“I’m not good at that,” Darcy rebutted. Gathering herself up to watch the seagulls in the distance. "Not worrying."

“Even if you could,” started Bucky, stopping just as suddenly. To him, Darcy was a painting of The Madonna come to life. In his darker moments, Bucky was convinced he had dreamed her up and that he would wake up any second in a cryotube. 

“I wouldn’t,” Bucky’s words went brittle again. The truth of it like blood, a disgusting but necessary truth. “Deserve it.”

“Deserve?” asked Darcy, though not expecting an answer. She looked at him intently, before looking away. Giving Bucky a reprieve from her gaze, even as he missed it the moment it was no longer on him. 

“Who said anything about deserve, Bucky?” Her question was a soft challenge. Bucky’s hand twitched in Darcy’s.

He wanted to pull away. Retreat. But he also didn’t. And he knew Darcy wouldn’t make the first move.

“You know. What I am,” he responded, confusedly. Darcy appeared upset. That wasn’t his intention at all, but he didn’t know what words he could say to fix it. “What I did.”

Unlike her usual, ebullient self, Darcy took several breaths to compose herself. Needing a moment to marshal her impressive intellect, and more impressive heart, to the task at hand.

“I’m not going to harp on the fact that it wasn’t your fault or that you didn’t deserve what happened to you. I think part of you already knows that.” Darcy rolled her neck around her shoulders, working out some tension that had creeped into them. “Fuck the concept of ‘deserve’ though. I hate that word.”

“The universe doesn’t give a fuck about who does or doesn’t deserve what it doles out. The universe just is.” She gesticulated with her right hand, left still anchoring him in his seat. “So deserve … Deserve what? Judged by whom? The powerful and the cruel, that’s who. Men (and women, but mostly men) _deciding_ who does and does not deserve. _Deciding_ for others who can have healthcare, food, housing, or the right to live. Who can have forgiveness. They raise the bar of deservingness so impossible high, that everyone not like them is washed away in a tide of undeservingness.” 

Bucky bore witness to her self-righteous fury.

“You know what does matter, though?” He met her eyes and they were feverish in their intensity. “That we _want_ to help you. Deserve or not. Steve wants to help you because he loves you. Tony does too, because he knows it wasn't your fault. And I do as well, Bucky.”

"Darcy," Bucky started but was quieted by the look in her eyes.

“I don't care about what happened in the past," Darcy’s fingers clench so tightly around his, his bones creaked. "I only want to help you make a better future."

Darcy threw herself 100% into everything she did. Bucky had been trailing after her like a lost dog from the first moment he met her. If she was throwing herself into the project of … Him? Well. The only thing he could do was follow behind her.

“James,” the man responded. Giving voice to a thought that had been sitting at the center of his mind for some time now. Since the moment he heard hear say James Buchanan Barnes.

“What?” Darcy asked, not quite following or understanding the non-sequitur.

“Call me James,” he repeated once more in a voice so soft, Darcy struggled to hear it. 

Darcy clenched her hand around Buc… Around James’ hand. She thought she understood.

The once Winter Soldier no longer felt like Bucky Barnes. Bucky Barnes died on a train a long time ago. Maybe he had all of Bucky’s memories, maybe he was still the same soul, the same person to a degree. _But he didn’t feel like that person anymore_. He didn’t feel like much of anything most days.

But … If Darcy was right. If it didn't matter if he deserved or not then maybe he didn’t need to try to force himself back into the broken shell that was Bucky Barnes. Maybe he could be James. Someone new. Not better but different. Less broken.

“James, then,” Darcy affirmed.

Acting again on instinct, Darcy rose from her chair. James’s hands still gripped in hers, she moved until she was standing between James and the rising sun. Her shadow hid his weary face from the sun, though he was no less bedazzled by the vision before him.

Darcy brought her right hand up, and switched hands. Her right hand was clasped with his right hand. For the first time ever, James's hand felt warm everywhere it touched her skin. James ran his thumb along hers, unconsciously.

Darcy pumped their joined hands up and down firmly. “Nice to meet you, James.” 

Darcy let her smile grow on her face, sure as anything James was observing and cataloging her every move. His eyes were like saucers, something boyish and vulnerable in them replacing the darkness. 

“Nice to meet you too, doll,” he choked out of his throat, struggling with the words. Struggling with feeling like he was a person.

“I’d like to hug you now. If you’d be okay with that?” She asked, staring down at him, eyes wide and hopeful.

James let go of her hand. He wanted, fiercely. He should say no to her. He wanted to say no to her. James was too dangerous. He was still the Winter Soldier. _He could hurt her_. Snuff out her light like he had so many others. He would do anything, pay anything, to avoid that. The inside his head was a storm.

But her hand felt so _goddam_ good in his. James didn’t remember the last time another person’s touch didn’t hurt. His hand tingled where it had been in contact with Darcy moments before. 

His skin was itchy from it, hungry. 

James was so close to tears, Darcy could see the shape of them forming. Only the Winter Soldier conditioning kept them from falling. He was choking on the ‘no’ he _knew_ he should give her. But, he did the only thing he _could_ do. 

He nodded his ascent.

Darcy moved slowly, like she was approaching a starving wolf with a scrap of fresh meat. Not afraid but cautious. Knowing she was giving him something vital and determined to see it through. It was the same emotion she felt when she braided Natasha’s hair or played with the Hulk. She wouldn’t back down, not unless she had to.

Darcy settled her blanket up around her head, to keep it steady, before reaching with both hands to grab the blanket covering Bucky. She unwrapped him and stepped into his space. She maneuvered herself carefully into his lap, her strong thighs bracketing his. 

As she moved to settle into hugging James with her full body, Darcy brought her own blanket up and over them both. Creating a little tent of fleece and shadow, occupied by just the two of them, hiding them from the gaze of the morning sun. 

Instinctively, James moved his one arm to wrap around her lower back. Her skin sparked trails of lightning everywhere he touched her. The sensation was so good, James’ arm squeezed, pulling her against him beyond his conscious control.

The best hug of his imperfect memory and he was desperate for more.

Darcy didn’t balk at James' clumsily handling. More importantly to James, Darcy didn’t even flinch at the feeling of metal and scarred flesh that was the left side of his body. Darcy grazed against it, unconcerned, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and back. Securing him in her arms as much as she was already securing him between her thighs. 

So warm. She was so fucking warm. Bucky hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath until it rushed out of him at the sensation of her squirming in his lap. 

The sensation traveled through his body in waves. An innocent motion on her part, he was sure. Yet he was on the precipice of being overwhelmed.

Darcy readjusted again, so she was more comfortably settled in Bucky’s lap. She settled her face into the curve of his left shoulder, forehead a mild heat where it rested between neck and cold metal.

Darcy’s chest rose and fell against his own, as she made soothing noises against his neck. The lace of her bra was delicate, scratching like warm knives against his skin. Sluggish cold water was being driven from his veins drop by drop and all that was left in its wake was boiling sensation.

James was on fire. He was achingly hard in the fabric of his boxer-briefs. The heat of her almost punishing, as the only thing separating them were two thin pieces of undergarments.

“I got you, James,” Darcy continued to comfort him with soft sounds and gentle noises. The man felt Darcy breath the words against the hollow of his neck. Darcy nuzzled into his neck, before pressing a kiss on the delicate space where metal and flesh met. 

“I’m sorry, doll,” was his response, as his arm tightened around her involuntarily. Holding her firmly against him, once more, cradling her in the curve of his body.

“What are you apologizing for, James?” Darcy scooched back, so she could look at him face to face. The movement readjusted his cock, until it settled along the span of her hip.

“I didn’t mean to get hard,” James mumbled the words around dry lips, as she stared at him from just inches away, James breaths were heavy in his chest. “That hasn’t happened since…” There was no need to finish the sentence.

“It's okay,” Darcy said, face so close and yet so far from James’ own. Darcy’s blue eyes were scalpel’s against his soul. Her eyes wide in their honest befuddlement. She scooped out his insides, rearranged them, and settled them back inside all at once. “I’m not mad at you for something you can’t control.”

The problem wasn’t control, though. Not for him. While James didn’t intend to get hard, he still _wanted_ her _._ James has long since fallen for the woman in his lap. Would do anything to make her smile. James thought himself incapable of doing anything correctly _but_ wanting the gorgeous woman in his arm.

It had never been like that for him before. Yes, James slept with the dames that caught his fancy. Steve, though it happened less frequently, did the same. James never desired any of Steve’s ladies though he could appreciate them aesthetically and platonically. To his knowledge, the same was true for Steve in reverse.

Bucky and Steve had each other, of course. But that was like saying the Moon had the Sun. It was so obvious as to not need pointing out.

James had never, not once in his memory, felt like this.

 _Why didn’t anyone ever tell him that feeling this good_ **_hurt?_ **That it broke you apart to dig, and dig, and dig, until there was nothing left inside but the sharp edged pleasure. It filled him to the brim.

“Fuck,” exclaimed James. He had to escape her gaze but there was nowhere to go. He buried his head into the hollow of her clavicle. The slightest mist of sweat, a hint of Darcy's sent now in his senses, clean and pure. The heat trapped inside the blanket was growing, leaving the air humid around them.

“It’s okay,” she gentled him like a skittish horse. Darcy moved her hand into James’s hair and soothed his scalp with firm fingertips.

James moaned into the hollow of her collarbone, body involuntarily hunching against the dame in his arm. Length dragging against Darcy's soft folds.

Only then, did Darcy freeze.

“I,” James panted into her skin. Darcy’s hands gripped his head and hair softly, a slight tug to indicate she wanted him to rise and meet her eyes. He shook his head, still hiding from her. 

“James?” inquired Darcy. Her chest was rising more rapidly then. James could feel it. Prayed to every god he could think of, begging that it wasn't due to fear.

“I want,” he panted out once more, lips and breath dancing against the skin found there. Leaving a trail of moisture between his tongue and the soft skin beneath.

“What do you want, James?” Darcy asked, hands no longer gripping his hair to maneuver him. Rather, they were trailing against his scalp once more. Each scratch shooting sensation up and down James’ spine, straight to his cock.

They had both become damp at their point of contact.

“You,” James squeezed his eyes so tightly, he could see yellow and black sparkles shine in his vision. His thighs were tense beneath Darcy, muscles like tectonic plates, pressure building higher and higher until James thought he would shake apart. “Just you, doll.”

“Look at me, James,” implored Darcy. Everything was moving so rapidly, Darcy felt like a trash bag in a tornado. If she could look him in the eyes, see his face as he spilled such sweet words from his lips, maybe she could figure out the right thing to do.

James was broken but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what this probably looked like to Darcy. A traumatized man finding comfort in the first person to show him an ounce of human kindness. A kicked dog, running to the first master that fed him.

It didn’t feel like that to him. It _really_ didn’t. It didn’t feel like safety. It felt like fire, like pleasure enough to drive away the cold.

The only memories in all of his head not tainted with blood and excrement, were those of warm pleasure shared between two bodies. Hydra may have been monsters but they never abused him that way. Never made him inflict it on others. One horror that he was spared, even if it was more by chance than lack of moral decency on Hydra's part.

James wanted that pleasure. Wanted the languid soupiness that suffused his body after a good orgasm. Wanted the moans of a body against his, as it moved with him to a crescendo.

James wanted that with Darcy.

But James knew. Knew what he would find in her eyes if he looked at her. He wanted to avoid the apology. Wanted to delay the look of crushing pity and crippling rejection.

“Look at me, James,” Darcy demanded. Hands gripping his dark locks firmly once more, but not painfully.

James finally relented. Allowed Darcy to maneuver his head until finally, finally, he was looking at her once more.

Darcy found such naked want in Bucky’s eyes, it left her speechless. In the shadow of the blanket still around them both, his eyes were blown wide, black without any hint of blue. He looked at her like she was a biblical angel, something terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible to behold.

“Please,” James pleaded for absolution. Darcy was a vision Botticelli would sell his soul to paint. Fire that cleansed him, even as it consumed him.

A war raged in Darcy, equal to James’ own. If she was completely honest, she wanted. She wanted more strongly than she was afraid that it was a bad idea. How could she not? Not just because he was lovely. Though that was a small part of it. Not just because she loved Steve. Loving Steve, meant loving Bucky. But that was also a small piece of the puzzle.

James came to her first. Chose to go to her, even when he didn’t have to and didn't need her. Not really. James could have gone to anyone but Darcy. Steve, Natasha or T’Challa off the top of her head. People who loved him, had history with him, or owed him. 

Instead, James came to her. Built a routine with her. A routine that had started to fit around her like a second skin, if she were perfectly honest. James listened to her, saw her, in a way few others had. Consumed her with hungry eyes.

An angel missing one wing was still an angel.

Darcy made a choice and prayed it wasn’t the wrong one.

Darcy answered James' prayer, lowering her mouth until she pressed her lips against his. James’ one arm shook around her, moaning low and broken into her mouth.

“Please, doll,” James pressed the words into Darcy’s mouth. His hips, completely out of his control, rucked her against his length in millimeter small movements.

Darcy pressed him down with her body, until every inch of them that could touch was pressed against each other. When she was no longer in danger of falling backwards and off his lap, she moved in counterpoint to James’ thrusts.

“You know,” whispered Darcy. Only soft words were allowed between them in that sacred moment. Darcy teased a breath along the seam of James’ mouth. James responded to her silent plea, plundering her mouth with skilled lips and tongue. They luxuriated in each others mouths for long minutes.

Darcy pulled back, smirk dancing once more on her lips. Delighting in the closed-eyed, bitten lip pleasure of the man beneath her. “Steve calls me ‘doll’ as well. I think we need a name that’s just for you.”

“How about asshole?” James quipped back, once more surprising them both. It was the first hint of the smart-mouth Steve had spent countless hours extolling.

Darcy’s laughter bubbled up around him like champagne, sweet and intoxicating.

“How about ‘fuck you’?” Darcy smiled around the words, rolling her core firmly up and down his length. A blink-and-you-miss-it grin passed over the mouth of man, but Darcy's didn't miss it. 

“Ah think that’s. Stevie’s job. Don’t ya?” The small phrases no longer coming in fits and starts because of discomfort with talking. Rather, they were being punched out from him with every pass of Darcy’s tantalizing hips.

“ _Stevie_ is in the motherfucking doghouse. So, I’m afraid it’s just me and Ms. Fingers here for a while.” She drummed her fingers against his neck, where she was clutching him tightly, to emphasize the point. "Well, me and you."

A look of contrition passed across James’ face, breaking briefly through the pleasurable haze. Darcy didn’t give it a moment to gain purchase. 

“Steve’s fuck up, not yours,” She squeezed her hands and thighs around him reassuringly. “We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t want to get in the way, sweetheart,” the endearment fell from his lips unconsciously. His arm around her waist, no longer needing to support her, was running up and down Darcy’s back. “Between you and Steve.”

“Now don’t go borrowing guilt that isn’t yours,” Darcy reassured, as Bucky’s hands settle at the clasp of her bra. “Steve and I already agreed that if it ever came up, both of us would welcome you.”

“To your bed?” He worried at the bra hook, uncertain. Eyes shy, asking silently for more, while dropping pecks to lips, along jaw, to neck. Wherever he could reach.

“To everything,” Darcy stated, claiming his mouth in a fiery pitch. Bucky raced eagerly to undo the clasp of her bra with one hand. Darcy smile, endeared by him, as she brought her own hands into play to work the bra off her shoulders. Leaving only their undershorts between them.

For long moments, they rubbed against each other, reveling in the sensation. 

“Fuck. I need you, sweetheart,” James moaned, thighs widened. Giving him more leverage in his reclined position. Letting him start using his legs and glutes, to thrust against Darcy where they were both dripping with need.

Darcy bucked against him, sliding along his shaft, teasing her clit through the fabric. When her bottom returned to his lap in a firm slap, the force throbbed through James’ balls.

“There we go,” Darcy responded before James become aware of what he had been calling her in the heat of the moment. “You can call me sweetheart.”

“Sweetheart?” James parroted back, like he was unsure he was saying the right word. 

“Yes, James,” she responded with a husky smile. The fabric between them was damp with James’ precum and Darcy’s slick.

“Sweetheart,” he breathed it out once more, experimentally, finding the taste of it good. James played with the strands of Darcy’s hair as they kissed. James moved his hand to stroke along the path of her spine, teasing the sides of her breast, before settling the large palm over her delicious backside.

The shiver that passed between them was all Darcy. Bucky used his hand to set them into a rocking motion that had them both climbing embarrassingly quickly.

The humidity under the blanket was growing, leaving them sweaty, making the glide that much more delicious.

“Not gunna last, sweetheart,” James admitted around a moan. Being driven crazy by Darcy’s wicked fingers along his sides and teeth working a gentle hickey into the left side of his neck. It had been far too long, James was perilously close.

Darcy was not too far behind. But first, she reached down between their bodies. Placing warm hands against the seams of James’ boxer-briefs.

"Off?" Darcy asked, as she grasped the hem.

James’ responded, impressively using his thighs and core to lift them both off the chair. Giving Darcy clearance room to free him from the confines of the fabric, pushing them down to mid-thigh. Both were too desperate to take the time to remove them completely. Bucky's length, thick and curved heavily upward, laid between them.

James used his hand to try to remove Darcy's panties, panting kisses into Darcy's mouth as his length rubbed against the delicate panties. He struggled, could find no polite way to remove them without removing her from his lap (which he refused to do). His hand clenched around them, tempted to rip them off.

Thankfully, Darcy as the genius that she was, didn't try to remove the panties. She reached down and shifted the small stretch of fabric covering her sex to the side. Exposing the folds of her.

Darcy stared into James’ eyes, as she reached down to grasp him in one fist. Darcy excitedly noted how she couldn't close her fist around it. James whimpered into her mouth, as she guided herself down on the hard shaft. Slowly. James's breath was coming in and out of his chest rapidly. Punching little noises against her mouth, desperation shaking his body beneath her.

Darcy groaned when she bottomed out on the impressive girth. She wiggled, adjusting to the length inside her. Though, Darcy was too impatient to wait very long. Gripping the back of the chair and using her thighs, she lifted her self up slowly but was only able to rise a scant inch or two. She lowered herself back down. And repeated the motion.

James’ face was wrecked, breath on the absolute verge of hyperventilation as Darcy slowly rode him. Only his iron self-control prevented him from coming instantaneously. He had to force his breathing pattern into something more stable, less he tumble off the cliff without Darcy.

On her next downward plunge, more from muscle memory than any conscious one, James rolled his hips in a wave. Sending him plunging into Darcy at a new angle, pressing along the front of her inner-walls, teasing along her g-spot.

"James," she moaned. The clench of Darcy's velvety insides round his him felt like victory. The look on her face dropping into an ‘O’ of pleasure felt like vindication.

He did it again. Darcy repeated his name. He kept doing it, and would keep doing so long as his name kept dropping from her lips like honey.

Darcy was starting to ripple around him, pleasure so sweet his iron self control slipped. Using his legs, his core, his arm, his whole body, he started to thrust into her uncontrollably. Length only going in and out a half-inch at a time, but each smack a pleasant throb that echoed through them both.

“James,” Darcy shouted his names, as her orgasm finally rocked through her. She thrust her hands into his hair, holding on for purchase, as she shook apart around him. 

It was enough for James. Finally, it was enough.

James emptied himself inside her, his own release rocking his body so hard he thought he might have sprained something. Every pass of Darcy’s skin felt like feathers and lightning. He couldn’t stop rocking, every pulse of Darcy around him pouring molten pleasure along his senses. The feeling of orgasm cascaded his body and brain, shutting him down.

It was only the feeling of Darcy moving to remove the now sweat-dampened blankets around them, that he startled into wakefulness. Darcy didn’t miss the movement. Instead of anger, there was only a low-glow of satisfaction and amusement in her eyes.

The experience must have shaken something loose in James’ brain. He had dozed off. While still twitching inside Darcy. 

“I really knocked it out of ya. Huh, James?” Darcy rose from wobbly legs. He couldn’t take his eyes off the expanse of her. Curves and cream and confidence, all wrapped up into one amazing package.

“Sweetheart,” James responded, hand held out to her. His legs were jello, boxer-briefs biting awkwardly around his impressive thighs, feet tangled in the blanket. He wiggled his fingers at her. “I could use a hand.”

“I would build you a million hands, if you wanted them,” Darcy joked with Bucky, smiling as she reached down to help him up. Underneath the joke, Bucky heard the promise.

“Happy with what I got here,” James said, squeezing her hand in his.

-

James slept in Darcy’s bed that night. Just slept. Seven whole hours and only a few nightmares. When he woke, he was facing towards Darcy. 

While James was no longer afraid that looking at her would strike him dead, she still blazed like the sun. Darcy’s breathing was deep, she let out a faint snore on each exhale. Drool gathered on a cheek, face squished into one of her many pillows, and there was a dark tangle of hair between them where it slipped free from a loose braid. James was enraptured.

 _James had slept._ Outside of his control, silent tear tracks ran down his face as he drank in the sight of his companion. He no longer felt quite so cold.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) “Thereafter I beheld a thousand faces / made doglike by the cold; hence frozen ponds / cause me to shudder now, and always will.” 
> 
> 2) “And now, while toward that center we were moving, / whereto all heavy objects gravitate, / and I was trembling in the eternal cold.”


End file.
